Once a train station (Jewish friends in Bärwalde)

     When, in1934, my mother, Edith, was christened, a Jewish friend of the family was present and gave her the above hand-made cloth. ("ES" stands for Edith Schultz.)
     When Edith and her Aunt Marthe fled the Russians in 1945, they could take very little with them, but they did take this. When mom emigrated to Canada in 1951, she again took it with her.

An abandoned train station in Bärwalde (Barwice): the last time my mother saw her "Jewish friends" was here

Mom's "mother" (actually, her Aunt Marthe) ran a business, as became necessary when her husband (my mom's stepfather) died in 1941.

Marthe had many good friends in town who were Jewish—evidently in the garment industry. My mother remembers some of these friends well.

This old house was perhaps the home of mom's doctor—likely Jewish.

Yesterday: wandering through the graveyard, finding no familiar names.

Yesterday: a random gravestone

My mother and her Aunt Marthe at mom's father's grave, c. 1941

Mom's Bärwalde home, during the war. It was destroyed during the Russian advance

Edith this morning in Bad Polzin, Pommeria

My father this morning